“She led us through the great hall, to see the kitchen; one suitable to such a hall, with a lofty, raftered roof, enormous chimney, and long old tables of oak, not nearly so thick as those in the hall at Coventry. Here the good woman was at the climax of her regrets, and she shook her head and sighed often. ‘It is a dismal place now, and what do I remember it in _Lady_ Perry’s time! I remember, when all them hooks,’ pointing to rows of them that run, at a great height, over the wide and lofty chimney piece and round the roof, ‘were hung with sides of bacon; ay, I ha’ seen them all hung with bacon. And here was such a sight of servants running about, some one way, some another.’ She then reverted to Lady P.’s coach and six, and the rejoicings that were to take place when she came down, and ‘_we girls_ used to stand all in a row.’ In short, one would have thought that nobody had ever lived in this mansion but Lady Perry. As to Sir Philip and the rest of the Sydneys, they were never thought of when she spoke of _old times_—a neglect which at first somewhat embarrassed me, who thought of them and old times as inseparable. She took us into a smaller kitchen, to show us the stoves and the iron plates, on which, in her old times, teacakes and crumpets were baked, and related, with pride, that she used to assist in turning them.” In October 1812, Mrs. Radcliffe visited Malvern. The following is her note of her walk to the summit of the hills:— “Oct. 21, 1812.—Having slept at the Foley Arms hotel, an excellent inn, delightfully situated, we walked out, about eleven, hoping to reach the highest point of the Malvern Hills. By the zigzag turf-path, we reached the little Well-house, where we came upon the wild turf, and began to ascend the higher steeps of a mountain. The hoary crags, in vast masses, looked out from among the brown and red tints of the autumnal fern, and from the green earth, but the crags ceased below the summits, which were smooth and still green. Our view here commanded the vast expanse to the eastward, which we had seen from the inn; but we now saw over the broad Breedon hill, which there bounded the horizon in one direction; and many lines were now visible beyond it. This view is great and comprehensive, but not sublime; the elevation reducing the importance of other heights, so that no single object remains sufficiently striking, either in form or character, to arrest attention, and break the uniform harmony of that rich and woody scene, the vale of the Severn, whose waters were visible only here and there, in little glimmering threads of light. At the summit, we could just discern them near Bristol, rolling in greater breadth. From the Well-house, we soon reached a good winding path, cut in the turf, which led us round one mountain, overlooking other craggy or green steeps of Malvern, till we caught a first glimpse of Herefordshire and of the hills of South Wales, over the ridge, to the west.